Rate My Professor Michael Nitsche

Michael Nitsche is Professor in Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he joined in 2004 and founded the Digital World and Image Group (DWIG). He directs DWIG, which focuses on improving interactions between people using digital media. Since 2021, Nitsche has served as Associate Director for the Digital Media component of the MS in Human-Computer Interaction program. In 2024, he became director of the Georgia Tech Berlin Program. Additionally, since 2015, he has co-edited the Taylor & Francis journal Digital Creativity with Julia Sussner. Nitsche teaches courses primarily for the Digital Media masters and PhD programs, the HCI program, and undergraduate Computational Media programs. His collaborations include academic and commercial partners such as Turner Broadcasting, Google, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, Alcatel-Lucent, the Georgia Tech Broadband Institute, and game developers Funatics and Electronic Arts. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Georgia Tech sources including IPaT, DILAC, the Serve-Learn-Sustain program, and SCoRE.

Nitsche holds a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Cambridge (2004), an M.Phil. in Architecture and the Moving Image from the University of Cambridge, and an M.A. in Drama and German Language from Freie Universität Berlin. His research specializes in digital spaces and their intersection with physical environments, video games, mobile technology, and digital performances. Key areas include human-computer interaction, game studies, virtual worlds, digital performance, and machinima, with expertise in craft, digital performance, hybrid space, interaction design, locative social media, machinima, and video game space. He has published extensively in these fields. Key publications include Vital Media: Making, Design, and Expression for Humans and Nonhumans (MIT Press, 2022), Video Game Spaces: Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds (MIT Press, 2009), and The Machinima Reader, which he co-edited with Henry Lowood (MIT Press, 2011).